Following the recent update to our publishing platform we
have now introduced a number of new features and functionality for you. The
update includes adding the ability for you create Deep links and Universal IDs
(also known as UNIVIDS), and an improved reporting system, find out more below,

Deep links and Universal IDs

Deep links and Universal IDs (also known as UNIVIDS) allow
you to link directly to your apps that you have uploaded to Vodafone AppSelect
from a web page, a banner or even directly from an Android app. These give you
the flexibility to create campaigns that not ...

Last night we were delighted
to announce the winners of the inaugural Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards at a ceremony attended by
the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes and Vodafone Group
Chief Executive Vittorio Colao.

The competition opened in
June and after a number of judging rounds the final four winners were decided
by a panel consisting of representatives from Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone Group
Services Limited, Guardian Media Group plc the European Disability Forum and
AGE Platform Europe.

It's been an incredibly exciting year for us, and now as
the year draws to a close, we thought we would update you on some key dates
over the next month.

1.
Publishing platform planned downtime.We are doing the last upgrade
for the year on our publishing platform. This will result in the platform being
unavailable on the 6th December from 18h00 to 00h00 CET, so make sure you plan
your publications either before or after that time!

2.
Support offline.Our online support facility is
closing for the festive season and will therefore be unavailable from the ...

Great news
for students in Portugal!
Earlier this week Vodafone Portugal and the University of Lisbon Faculty of
Sciences (FCUL) signed an agreement to create a laboratory devoted to research
and development projects related to mobile technologies.

The
Laboratory will operate within the curriculum of the Master's degree in
Computer Engineering by assigning projects to a range of disciplines
appropriate for their implementation and in line with objectives and issues
identified jointly by Vodafone and FCUL.

A specific
area has been selected for the establishment and operation of the Laboratory –
the 'Vodafone App Factory' room – where students and lecturers ...

So you’ve
heard about our new app store ‘Vodafone
AppSelect’ and you’d love to have a play and see what it’s like, but you don’t have
a device. Well you now can via the Vodafone
Handset Cloud where Vodafone
AppSelect is available on a number of real live devices. It’s FREE to
register and use this service, and is also a great way to test out your apps on
a variety of real handsets. Find out more and how to register for the service
here

With the
recent launch of Vodafone AppSelect our customers
are looking for apps that stand out from the crowd, and creating useful and
innovative mobile apps isn't rocket science. In fact, the best recipe for
success is surprisingly simple:

Match your own skills and
interests to an everyday problem, and solve it better, or with a
difference

Stay focused on the user
experience

Pay attention to the details

To help
get you on the right track we have a paper that offers five straightforward
tips to help you plan and implement successful mobile apps, covering,

Today Vodafone
launched a refreshed app shop called Vodafone
AppSelect where Vodafone customers
can easily discover and download apps and games for their Android phone. Vodafone AppSelect will come pre-installed on Vodafone Android phones and has a clean, compelling
and easy to use design that surfaces relevant content to a wide range of
customers. Vodafone AppSelect will
be available across 9 markets (United
Kingdom, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Portugal,
Ireland, Greece, Netherlands and Russia).

So why Vodafone AppSelect?

Vodafone AppSelect is exclusive to Vodafone and
provides customers with a simplified purchase environment.

UPDATE: 17th November (15:15 GMT) - The Vodafone Apps
Publishing Platform is back up and online now.

We are planning a number of updates to our Apps
Publishing Platform (http://developer.vodafone.com/upload) and as a result the
platform will be taken offline from 09:00 (CET) 16th November 2011. We will post an update as soon as the platform is back online.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, and
will post an update as soon as the system is live again.

Thank you for looking to distribute your apps with
Vodafone, and for your continued ...

In our endeavors to provide our developer community with
best of breed support, we are pleased to announce that we have a new ticketing
system to capture your support requests!

This ticketing system will enable us to respond to your queries
more efficiently, ensuring your query receives the necessary attention as
quickly as possible.

Please note that the support ticketing system located at https://developer.vodafone.com/support/ticket/
is now the only mechanism by which our
support engineers are able to respond. Our support engineers are not able to
respond to support requests raised via direct email.

The GSMA (the organization that represents mobile network
operators worldwide, including Vodafone) recently published a summary
of research that it commissioned on user perspectives on mobile privacy.
The aim of the research was to improve our knowledge of the public’s
perceptions of mobile privacy and the extent to which privacy concerns may
inhibit the uptake of mobile services and applications, including new offerings
such as location-based services. The project’s methodology involved
face-to-face and telephone interviews and a large-scale online survey,
including people in the UK, Singapore, and Spain. In total, over 4,000 people
participated. The study’s ...

We have been facing a number of issues with our
publishing platform today http://developer.vodafone.com/upload which we are
working hard to resolve. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may have
caused you and hope to have the platform back up and running as soon as
possible.

We will post an update as soon as the system is live again.

Thank you for looking to distribute your apps with
Vodafone, and for your continued support!

· we now have updated application and
games terms & conditions. New submissions and any existing apps in the
Vodafone Shop will be subject to these terms and conditions, and these will
need to be accepted by you in order for us to be able to distribute your
application or game. You can view the terms and conditions here - http://developer.vodafone.com/develop-apps/android/android-terms-and-conditions/

Are you looking to enter the
Vodafone Foundation Smart
Accessibility Awards? Then don’t delay,
entry closes on the 15th October. This leaves you just 3 days to finalise and
submit your app!

PLEASE NOTE: We have noticed a bug
which is resulting in uploads timing out after 2 minutes. If you are not able
to complete your upload within that time, please reply to this mail, attaching
your .apk file in zipped format along with the name of your app as well as
company name, and we will confirm with you once your entry has been finalised.
Apologies for ...

Looking to
publish your app in The Netherlands? If you are then please be aware that we
are closing the ‘Apps’ channel within the Vodafone Shop in The Netherlands.
This is solely for apps and you can still continue to publish as normal in the
7 other Vodafone markets and MTS.

This
update is being made as a result of a change in focus for our Vodafone
customers in The Netherlands and the change will take place on 17th October
2011.

Please
note that games remain unaffected by this change and you can continue to
publish to all 8 Vodafone ...

The Vodafone Foundation in
association with the Digital Empowerment Foundation introduce the Women
& Innovation for Mobile (WIN) Award. The aim of the 'WIN Awards' is to celebrate and recognise
innovative mobile applications and solutions that enable empowered information
and communication services delivery to women in India.

The “WIN” Awards seeks to identify innovative mobile solutions which meet
the diverse needs of women under the following categories:

Education

Healthcare & Family

Economic Empowerment &
Entrepreneurship

The three winning solutions will each qualify for a funding grant of
44,00,000 INR to further develop and scale their mobile innovation to serve a
larger ...

We wanted to let you know that we are changing the territories and platforms
supported by Vodafone Shop over the coming months (this includes Shops on
non-Android platforms, on the web and the Vodafone 360 Shop). And from 17th
October 2011 onwards these Vodafone Shop clients will be shutdown, pending local
market specificities, as we are refreshing our mobile shopping experience for
our customers.

Be sure to stay tuned for exciting updates and developments
across the platforms in the near future!

Earlier this week Vodafone
hosted Smart Accessibility workshops
in Belfast and Madrid. At both workshops there was a great
turn out, and even better ideas and insights shared. Attendees from both the
developer and accessibility communities joined together to share valuable info
and there were even some great demos too.

For
the Belfast workshop
there were some fantastic presentations that looked at ‘an introduction to
accessibility’ and advice from the industry on how to develop for this market.
There was some pretty impressive technology on show that included voice
recognition – and in fact how this can help in everyday life ...

Vodafone
today acknowledged and rewarded three start-ups at the forefront of mobile
internet service innovation. The start-ups are the winners of an international
competition established by Vodafone to help identify and support the next
generation of leaders in the global application development community.

The
winners of the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011 are:

1st
place (€150,000 prize): FrogTek (Spain) is a simple and intuitive
point-of-sale inventory management application with the potential to transform
how shopkeepers in the developing world manage their businesses. The
application uses basic Android smartphone and barcode reader functionality to
enable retailers to access sophisticated stock ...

Over the coming weeks we are going to be making changes to
the Vodafone Shop submission process for your apps and games. These changes are being made as we are
committed to delivering an excellent and unique Vodafone experience within the Vodafone
Shop. With a focus on higher quality applications customers are more likely to
return and download again which therefore increases the visibility of your apps
to the customer and drives revenue opportunities. These changes, combined with
direct customer billing (i.e. no need for credit cards) enhance the experience
for the customer.

At Vodafone developer we recently launched the Smart
Accessibility Awards, where
you have the chance to win a share of €200,000! In the lead up to the
competition we’ve teamed up with Mobile Monday (http://www.mobilemonday.org.uk/) and
ICT (www.ictktn.org.uk) to host four half-day
accessibility workshops, which kick off in Edinburgh on Friday 16th
September. Other locations include Manchester, London and Belfast, with some exciting European locations too including
Madrid (September 28th), the Netherlands and Germany. Further details will follow and we’ll let you know
as soon as they’re ...

With just five weeks of the competition remaining, the race is on for
you to submit your entry for the entry Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards and be in with a chance of winning a share of
the €200,000 prize fund.

The programme is supported and
co-organised by AGE Platform
Europe, the European network of
around 160 organisations of and for people aged 50+, and the European Disability Forum (EDF), the
NGO that represents the interests of 80 million Europeans with disabilities.

Entries
from across Europe will go head to head to win a share of the total prize ...

We’re really excited to announce that Vodacom
in South Africa has launched the first application store in the market– Vodacom
Apps will feature a catalogue of over 140,000 applications. We think that this
will drive the growth and innovation within an already thriving local South
African mobile ecosystem.

The store, known as Vodacom Apps, will deliver
applications for major mobile platforms including Android, Blackberry, Java,
Symbian and Windows Mobilewhich means you can address the vast majority of data
capable feature phones and smart phones in the market. The store will feature a wide variety of apps
in various ...

Ovum are conducting a Developer Insights Survey for 2011,
and we thought this would be a great opportunity for developers to get their
voices heard and potentially win a prize! Here’s more information about the survey:-

Are
you a mobile developer or are you involved in your company’s mobile application
strategy? If so, Ovum is interested in your opinions for the Ovum Developer
Insights Survey 2011. Take part and receive a free copy of Ovum’s Mobile Application Developer Survey 2010 and a chance to
win an iPad 2 or BlackBerry PlayBook.

Vodafone first in Europe with operator billing for Android Market
Developers can monetise their apps even more easily through Android Market

19 August 2011. Vodafone developer today announces the first rollout in Europe of direct operator billing for Android Market. Vodafone UK and Vodafone Germany will help consumers purchase their favourite apps and games on Android Market even more easily without the need to enter credit card details. This will give developers direct access to millions of Android users who can now charge their Android Market purchases straight to their phone bills or prepay accounts.

Vodafone
Netherlands
today announces Skylines (http://skylin.es/)
as a finalist in the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011
contest. Skylines beat off serious competition from other Dutch start-ups, such
as Repudo and 22 Tracks, in two local judging rounds, and will now go to
head-to-head against six other country finalists to be in with a chance to win
a share of the €225,000 prize fund.

Skylines offers a
search platform for real-time images. Combining data from social media like
Instagram, and Yfrog Twitpic, Skylines indexes over one million photos a day. Skylines
currently is available in a concept version on ...

Vodafone UK today announces that
ParcelGenie has been selected as a finalist in the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011
contest. ParcelGenie (http://www.parcelgenie.com/) beat serious competition from other UK start-ups in two local judging
rounds, and will now go head-to-head against six other country finalists to win
a share of the €225,000 prize fund.

ParcelGenie is the world’s first
Instant Gift Messaging service that makes sending real gifts to friends and
family almost as simple as sending an email or a text message. Customers can
send a gift to someone using just their mobile number – no delivery ...

We
are the first operator in Europe to have announced the introduction of
the Vodafone channel on the Android Market. This will allow millions of
customers across Europe to have access to exciting new Vodafone content quickly
and easily and often exclusively or at promotional prices.

So
what does this mean for you, the developer?

This
is different to the Vodafone Shop in that it’s not a complete retail
experience but it is a branded, promotional window which is limited to 25
items. This window will be used to showcase Vodafone’s own services
complimented with select content from ...

In the week of the first EU Digital Assembly in Brussels, Vodafone Foundation is
launching the Smart Accessibility Awards. This is a new competition to
promote the development of IT applications designed to improve the lives of
people with disabilities and older people to help them become more actively
involved in society.

The programme is supported and co-organized by AGE Platform Europe, the European network of around 160
organisations of and for people aged 50+, and the European Disability
Forum (EDF), the NGO that represents the interests of 80 million
Europeans with disabilities.

With just three weeks to go before the Vodafone
Mobile Clicks 2011 competition closes, the race is on across the internet
start-up community to submit an entry and be in with the chance to win a share
of the €225,000 prize fund. The closing date for entries is midnight on 12th
June, 2011 CET.

This year’s panel of local and global
judges includes Rudy de Waele, founder of Mobile 2.0 Europe and dotopen; Peter
Barry, Vodafone Ventures; Paul Jozefak, Mobile VC; Reshma Sohoni; partner at
Seedcamp and Lee Epting, Vodafone Group. Each judge will be scoring ...

All the headlines recently show that mobile network and
smartphone privacy are a very hot topic (for a taste, see this
latest furore over Apple’s collection of location data). Increased
attention from regulators, advocates, the press and our customers is creating
the perfect storm for privacy in the mobile ecosystem. To help stay on top of
it all, our industry association GSMA has been working over the last year (with
Vodafone’s strong support) to create a mobile privacy framework: the Mobile
Privacy Initiative.

Getting
your app in front of users, converting visibility into downloads, and
converting downloads into revenue, is an increasingly complicated trick to pull
off.

Both
stores and apps have rapidly proliferated. What used to be a problem of availability
(if you weren't "on the deck" there was nowhere else to go) is now a
problem of visibility (you're in the store, but no one is finding you).

To get you
started we’ve created an article that pulls together some basic advice for app
developers on why you should be marketing your app. Read the full article here ...

Intents are one of Android's "Big Ideas". From the beginning,
Android was conceived as a "mobile mashup platform". We commonly
think of mashups in a web context, as a "remix" UI displaying data from
multiple services within a page. With apps, and Android, the opportunity is a
little bit different, but the idea is the same – to enable developers to
aggregate and build on the work of others, and to "stand on the shoulders
of giants" when creating new apps.

In Android, "remixing" other apps to build your own app means
re-using the functionality and UIs of other apps ...

Today at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, we're delighted to announce the opening of Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2011, an international contest to identify and develop the best, most innovative mobile internet start-ups.

Already known as the
biggest start-up competition of its kind, this year’s Vodafone Mobile Clicks is
open to seven markets. Any start-up in Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, the
Republic of Ireland, Spain, Turkey or the United Kingdom that has a mobile
site, service or application can compete for the €225,000 prize fund by
submitting entries to www.vodafonemobileclicks.com.

On Saturday 16th April we hosted a developer day with our friends from Sony Ericsson and Ideaworks. We wanted to focus on 3D techniques for Android (did you ever think that the pressure API could be used to do something cool?) and the capabilities of the OpenGL libraries as well as a demo of the @airplaysdk from Ideaworks.

@erikhellman‘s presentation also talked about the different interaction methodologies we are using (i.e. touch vs. mouse), how that affects users, how sticking a 3D overlay on a 2D experience isn’t the way forward and also how 3D is not ...

We’re pleased to announce that we can now accept your Live Wallpapers for Android. They will appear in the Vodafone Shop in the markets you select during the upload process and all you need to do is add the following line to your APK manifest file:

The Vodafone developer team always loves to get out on the road. And this week has been no exception, with the last couple of days spent at The Big M event here in Bath, where we were also a main sponsor. The Big M may be new on the developer event scene, but it still managed to line up two days of top level speakers covering a wide range of topics from HTML5 to user experience, monitzation and what the future holds.

Vodafone developer and Sony Ericsson have joined forces to give a
unique insight into creating 3D applications for Android. There will
also be a workshop for developers to put some of these concepts into
practice, as well as using the expert advice from the Vodafone developer
and Sony Ericsson teams to help put the finishing touches to any
existing Android projects.

Many thanks to everyone who completed our recent developer survey. This
information is invaluable in helping us deliver the best possible developer
experience.

I’d also like to congratulate our winners, Lee Stone
and Jason Kenny who were randomly selected to win a Vodafone
McLaren Mercedes signed shirt, and Hemal Shah who was our third selection and wins a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes signed cap. Well done to you all!

Please remember to regularly check our developer website for all the latest
resources and tools.

Remember to take our developer survey and have the chance to win signed (by Lewis & Jenson) Vodafone McLaren Mercedes clothing. Only a few days left!

Through developer.vodafone.com and other developer engagement activities we want to deliver the best possible experience for developers going forward. But we need your feedback to help us achieve this. To gather this feedback we invite you to take our developer survey, which should only take a few minutes to run through. To encourage you, we'll be holding a random draw of all the survey entrants on the 28th February 2011, with the ...

Some of you may have picked up on the news from Mobile World Congress
last week that we have entered into an agreement with Research In Motion (RIM)
to provide operator billing for BlackBerry® App World(tm) later this year. With
so many interesting announcements during the course of the show last week, we
wanted to highlight this as it will no doubt be of interest to the
community.

With 'Charge to Bill' for BlackBerry® App World™, consumers will have
the flexibility of charging the cost of their app, or a payment within the app,
directly to their bill. It ...

On 17 February 2011, Mobile World Congress, Barcelona / London, the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) announced the election of Lee Epting, Content Services Director, Vodafone Group, as the MEF EMEA Chair after being voted onto the MEF EMEA Board at this week's annual meeting in Barcelona. Epting will lead a newly elected team of MEF EMEA board representatives from mobile network operators as well as mobile content and advertising ecosystems - MTN, Qtel, Dolby, Buongiorno and InMobi - driving the organisation forward in supporting its members across the region.

Earlier today (Wednesday 16 Feb 2010) Vodafone congratulated the winners of the Vodafone-sponsored GSMA mWomen Base of the Pyramid Apps Challenge at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2011. The competition is a key component of the GSMA mWomen Programme and has drawn high quality entries from developers across the world, seeking to provide original mobile solutions targeted at the specific needs of women in developing countries.

Vodafone's work with the GSMA mWomen Programme will help bring the socio-economic benefits of mobile to women in developing markets worldwide. The programme is a sizable public-private partnership between the global mobile industry ...

The team arrived and got stuck straight into day one of MWC 2011. The usual long line of late registrations meant things only really started hotting up (despite the rain, this shouldn't happen in Barcelona, right?) from lunchtime on the show floors of the Halls.

But for Vodafone developer the day kicked off with a live TV opportunity first thing that set the tone for the rest of the day with healthy debate from Hemant Madan, Head of Vodafone developer and fellow panelists from Flirtomatic and doubleTwist.

We're gearing up for the biggest mobile show of the year next week, Mobile World Congress (MWC). The team will be out in Barcelona and our big focus this year is all around mobile in emerging markets. Emerging markets represent significant opportunities for developers. It's amazing what a difference mobile can make to rapidly change the lives of those in developing countries, amongst women in particular. We're really keen to encourage innovation amongst our community to help meet the demands of those in emerging markets. Through this programme we're aiming to halve the 300 million gender ...

If you have followed our widget samples series, you should have a good idea of what the JIL/WAC APIs can do for you, and how to use them in your code. The samples have covered a selection of JIL features like using the accelerometer, playing audio files, getting and displaying maps and location, and using the PIM APIs to display contacts from the address book.

As well as JIL-specific topics, the samples have also covered more general topics like how to structure a widget, and how to create dynamic overlays and multi-page widgets.

This is the last of the widgets in our Widget Samples series. All but the simplest widgets are likely to benefit from using multiple pages. The Multipage sample implements a two-page, list-based widget that demonstrates basic page building and switching techniques.

On launch, the widget displays a Navigation list; selecting an item from the list builds and switches to an appropriate details list; a back button returns the user to the main page. It's a simple example, but the techniques are universally useful. You can reuse the sample code as a starting point for your own projects.

Thanks to everyone for uploading your apps to the Vodafone Shop. We're seeing some great apps come through and are looking forward to seeing many more over the coming months.

As you know QA is a key part of the publication process and we wanted to pass on some tips to help you get your apps ready to pass through the QA process with ease. Below are the most common reasons for apps not passing QA first time, please take a moment to review these as they could save you a lot of time!

Are you developing a cool new mobile app? As a developer, you probably know how important it is to make sure that your app (native Android or widget) works properly and displays correctly not only in a simulator environment but also on real mobile handsets.

Well, the best news is that you can do this now via the “The Vodafone Handset Cloud” service. This service enables you to test your apps on REAL mobile handsets working in the Vodafone networks in Germany and in Italy.

Many current handsets are available, including the following that have just been added to the ...

Although this isn't a traditional developer event as such we thought you might be interested to learn about Vodafone's presence at the "Mobile for the Cultural Sector" event, 8-9 March 2011, London. At the event Jessica Gwyther, Global Content Manager - Vodafone, will be debating how cultural institutions can exploit and make accessible their content on mobile?

The event focuses on mobile and the cultural sector. The event (organised by Culture Label, Camerjam and Spark) will explore the use of mobile technology by cultural organisations looking at the opportunities it offers to generate new content and revenue streams, communicate ...

Address Book sample widget

Our Widget Samples series continues with the Address Book sample widget, which demonstrates how to fetch and display address book entries from the phone's address book and launch actions from contact details. For example, selecting a phone number detail launches the phone dialler; selecting an email address detail launches the messaging editor.

The address book API is part of the JIL/WAC PIM API, which enables widgets to interact with the phone's on-board address book and calendar. For example, widgets can create new address book and calendar entries, search for and read existing entries ...

NextDB.net is a JavaScript API for cloud database programming that enables web
developers to build data driven web applications without
any server side coding.
To further simplify things, there is an abstraction layer on top of the
JavaScript API to enable faster development by automatically creating HTML
forms that connect to your NextDB.net account and takes care of many of the
time consuming issues in web development.
With one line of code you
can add a database enabled HTML form to your page to execute inserts, updates
or queries.
This new library is based ...

Audio sample widget

Our Widget Samples series continues with the Audio sample widget, which demonstrates just how easy it is to add sound capabilities to your JIL apps and games. Whether you want to create a dedicated audio player, or add sound effects to a game or app, the JIL/WAC audio API is simple and easy to use, and supports play, pause, resume, stop, and repeat play, for local and remote files.

Common audio formats are supported including MP3, for high quality audio playback, and WAV (useful for samples and effects). Depending on the phone, MP4 (i.e. AAC ...